Below is a Tourism Alliance update on VisitBritain’s latest upgraded forecasts for inbound tourism and revised IPS figures for 2021.
Also below information from Susan Tanner of NOEA’s Awards – open to non-members and their Annual Convention on Wednesday, the 23rd November.
Entries for Awards: Award Nominations – NOEA | UK
Annual Convention bookings: Noea – NOEA Annual Convention & Awards Dinner Tickets | Wednesday 23rd November 2022 (seetickets.com)
- VisitBritain Upgrades Inbound Forecast
VisitBritain has upgraded it’s forecast for inbound tourism to the UK during 2022. At the beginning of the year, the forecast was that there would be 21.1m overseas visitors during the year who would spend £16.9bn in the UK economy (this represents, respectively, 52% and 59% of pre-covid levels). This forecast has been revised to 26.7m visitors and spending of £21.6bn (respectively, 65% and 76% of pre-covid figures).
In global terms this correlates with UNWTO figures that put global international tourism arrivals in the first 5 months of 2022 at 54% down on pre-covid levels. However, the UNWTO’s figures for international tourism arrivals to Western Europe at 79% of pre-covid level in May 2022, suggesting that the recovery in inbound tourism to the UK lags behind that of other European countries.
Click here for : VisitBritain Forecasts
Click here for : UNWTO figures
Revised 2021 IPS Figures
ONS, and therefore VisitBritain, have revised the IPS figures for 2021 (Summary here). The key figures are:
- There were 6.4 million inbound visits to the UK in 2021 with a gradual increase throughout the year as travel restrictions to the UK loosened and international travel resumed; 32% of visits were in Q3 and 59% were in Q4.
- Visitors spent £5.6bn in 2021 with Q4 generating the most spend at £3.0bn.
- The average spend per visit in 2021 was £884
- The travel purpose that provided the most recovery was VFR travel – which makes sense as people would want to visit friends and family when restrictions on travel where removed.
However, please bear in mind that the 2021 figures don’t include people arriving via the channel tunnel and ferry passengers where only included for the second half of 2021 so the IPS figures under report the actual number of visitors during 2021.